Today Gary Con’s Luke Gygax announced that Frank Mentzer will no longer be an Guest of Honor at Gary Con. Luke’s post is linked above via the Gary Con Facebook page.

]]>http://www.omensandportents.com/2019/02/harbinger-unheeded-frank-mentzer-out-at-garycon/feed/01968More Classic Traveller Goodness!http://www.omensandportents.com/2019/01/more-classic-traveller-goodness/
http://www.omensandportents.com/2019/01/more-classic-traveller-goodness/#respondSun, 20 Jan 2019 16:28:35 +0000http://www.omensandportents.com/?p=1939More good news for those who love OSR sci-fi! DriveThruRPG now has the Classic Traveller title, The Traveller Book available in PDF and Print on Demand from Game Designer’s Workshop!

Click the image below to get yours now!

]]>http://www.omensandportents.com/2019/01/more-classic-traveller-goodness/feed/01939Public Service Message: James Ward is not a plagiarizer.http://www.omensandportents.com/2019/01/public-service-message-james-ward-is-not-a-plagiarizer/
http://www.omensandportents.com/2019/01/public-service-message-james-ward-is-not-a-plagiarizer/#commentsThu, 03 Jan 2019 13:37:10 +0000http://www.omensandportents.com/?p=1912Once every year or so Jim Ward, I assume because he is tired of seeing misinformation and accusations about how TSR breached copyright laws by including the Melnibonéan and Lovecraftian mythoi in the 1st printing of the seminal Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Deities & Demigods book published in 1980, releases a statement about his involvement in the development, and publication of that work. His statement is reproduced below.

If you’ve ever done any writing professionally, and perhaps even if you haven’t, you can understand how this persistent misinformation could rub someone the wrong way. Most of the old grognards I know are familiar with this story, but even in our AD&D Facebook group the old rumors surface every so often.

So if you know Jim, or like Jim, or just dislike misinformation take some time to spread the truth about Deities & Demigods for a stalwart of the gaming industry and a true professional, not to mention a really nice guy.

This post is a bit different than what I usually post. Rather than a long rant, review, or journal entry, I’m exclusively looking for reader feedback. One of the many things I’d like to start here is a series of columns reviewing and calling out new OSR material that expands upon old adventure modules, or setting content. Adventure content expansion should be self explanatory. What I mean when I say setting expansion is, for example, if someone wrote an adventure around Dead Gnoll’s Eye Socket from the White Plume Mountain player’s map, or if someone filled out a missing pantheon of Greyhawk deities (Joe Bloch, I’m looking at you!) I am already aware of a few such projects that are available for TSR products and settings, but I don’t want to limit this to just D&D, or fantasy. I’d love to see what’s available for sci-fi games, historical games, horror games and so forth.

So, my gentle readers, please shout out your favorite such products or projects in the comments sections below. Let me hear what there is out there whether you are just a fan of someone else’s work, or if you just happen to be the gifted author yourself. I want to know about it, and I’ll later post about these products in their own post (and maybe just provide links to where customers can get them legally as well)!

While the page has been up for a while, I’ve not made any attempt to advertise it to visitors to this site until now. I’ve created a Free Resources page to store a few types of file for our OSR community.

First among these offerings will be short adventure modules. Currently I have up an adventure I wrote for my group of players who were playing T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil. Like other adventures that will appear here, this adventure is relatively short, and fits in as a side quest/experience builder for an already published adventure that needs some exposition/filler to play more smoothly. I hope to get other designs up over time creating a small library of content.

Second is a group of logos for the OSR community. Both are based on old TSR logos and I think they’re awesome!

I’d also like to host other helpful files with the permission of the creators. If you have a free gaming resource you’d like to post here, please contact me at alex.karaczun@omensandportents.com. Enjoy!

]]>http://www.omensandportents.com/2018/12/free-resources/feed/01859System Design Journal #3http://www.omensandportents.com/2018/12/system-design-journal-3/
http://www.omensandportents.com/2018/12/system-design-journal-3/#respondWed, 12 Dec 2018 16:29:06 +0000http://www.omensandportents.com/?p=1506Last time we discussed the creation of a core profession with my profession design framework. The Warrior (Fighter) is a pretty basic class and I was surprised to find out that my breakdown of profession abilities and how I weighted them created an experience table almost identical to the one in the AD&D Players Handbook. This time we are going to look at another core profession with a little more going on in the way of profession abilities, the Magician (Magic-user).

The experience tables for the two versions look like this.

I never realized how much variation there is in some of the original class experience tables. I always thought (obviously never really looked closely) that there was simple doubling going on (to a point), then after reaching 9th level the class gained fixed amounts, which by the way is how my tables work. So what we see here is a Magician Profession that has a steeper start on the experience chart, without the statistical bulge at mid-levels. It stays steady up to 9th level and then levels off as level plateaus become fixed. It all ends up at 18th level only about half a million experience points apart from the original AD&D chart. However, one thing I am considering is continuing to double experience as long as the class gains additional hit dice. That would mean doubling XP for two more levels with the Magician. I’ll need to think about this a little more.

One thing to note here is that this is the standard base Magician. School Specialists will all have their own experience charts (slightly steeper in all likelihood), descriptions, spell progression and customized spell lists just as the Illusionist is presented. And these classes will all top out at 9th level spells. There will also be a variant specialist called the Arch-Magus able to cast 10th level spells. The experience table for this profession will be incredibly steep, making the Magician look like a gentle climb. This profession is meant to describe the ancient mages of myth and legend who created earth shattering effects capable of warping the very fabric of reality, and even challenging the primacy of the gods and cosmic powers themselves.

That’s it for now. For the next installment, it is time for me to start tackling some of the thorny species balance problems I’ve been avoiding. To restate I am thinking about initially balancing all ability adjustments to zero sum, then developing a positive or negative modifier based on species special abilities and then using that modifier as a whole number in the ability equation. This will allow for imbalanced modifiers to abilities. For the column I’ll probably present two different species, one core and one expanded, and talk a bit how I derived their ability adjustments, and level caps. Until then I hope well see robust discussion on professions!

Yes, it is true! The classic Traveller Starter Edition is FREE over at DriveThruRPG! The “purchase” consists of three PDF files, a book of core rules, a separate set of charts, and a book of adventures.

I never owned this set as I had the original digest boxed set, but it appears to contain rules essentials in a format similar to The Traveller Book. The charts book contains a character sheet and subsector grid, as well as several charts for combat, starship design and construction, world generation and encounters among others. The adventures book contains two adventures; Mission to Mithril and Shadows.

You can get this little gem for the attractive price of zilch, nil, nada, bupkis, naught right here.

Well after months of wondering why no one was commenting on my posts I found out there was something broken between reCAPTCHA and my Theme. So, long story short I’ve changed to a new theme and comments seem to be working again with reCAPTCHA.

UPDATE: Ok folks, there is a “terms agreement” link for reCAPTCHA just above the “Post Comment” button. Please follow the link to agree to reCAPTCHA’s terms before submitting a comment. Also I have Admin Approval on for commenting. Comments will not appear immediately as I must approve them first.

First published in 1977, Tegel Manor is the oldest of “Haunted House” adventures in fantasy roleplaying, and probably the very first megadungeon ever published. The Manor is a sprawling edifice of 250+ rooms filled with tricks, traps, puzzles, monsters, and situations both humorous and horrific. The huge manor house has been the curse of its owners, the Rump family, for generations – no matter how many times they have tried to get rid of it, the ownership manages to come back to them.

This intertwined and sinister relationship between the house and its chosen family is a history of horror, evil, and greed. There is a lot for the characters to learn about the curse, and their knowledge might just keep them alive long enough to tell the tale.

This Kickstarter from Grog God Games is already funded and well on its way through stretch-goals. An interesting aspect of the campaign is that the physical books are initially in softcover (both S&W and D&D 5e), but as each edition surpasses 250 backers they will be upgraded to hardcover at no extra cost.

The counts for these editions as of yesterday 11/24 mid-afternoon was:

SW 139/2505E 222/250

Since I’m a S&W backer for this Kickstarter I’m hoping more of you will throw your support behind Matt Finch and company to get these books into hardcover.

So what are you waiting for? Get over to Kickstarter and check out the campaign! If you like what you see consider supporting FGG on this endeavor!

Although there are many adventures I wish I had written, top on the list would probably be U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. The design is simple, the premise intriguing and fun, and the execution very close to perfect.

My first encounter with this module was on the shelf of my local hobby shop, AB Charles & Son, in 1981. The cover art by Dave De Leuw struck me as evocative of the kinds of horror stories I loved as a then 14 year old. I bought it posthaste, and returned home to pour over the text and maps it contained.

What I found was simply amazing! Here was a starting adventure with such great atmosphere that I was sucked in and began imaging all the wonderful possibilities to which this could lead. Not long after thoroughly familiarizing myself with the module I had my players roll up new characters and we began adventuring in the town of Saltmarsh.

My one wish for this adventure is that the town itself was detailed in the way that Hommlet was in T1. Still the players kicked around a “Theater of the Mind” town (with no map) and then headed off to the haunted house. My recollection of how this played out is that it was a slow building tension. The players were constantly on guard for the first evidence of “haunting” and scared witless from a “meta” perspective, knowing that undead are extremely deadly for starting characters. By the time the characters found the way down to the caves the tension was incredibly thick. I recall the exhalations around the table as the players started coming to the realization that the place was not, in fact, haunted.

Then the tensions was back as they nearly got TPK’d by the illusionist Sanbalet, “smuggler 2” and a couple of gnolls. Following that battle I remember there being a trip back to town for healing and resupply. Following that, the PCs returned to finish off their exploration of the house, cellar and caverns, and were subsequently charged with boarding the Sea Ghost. I recall there being trouble with the Lizard Men aboard the ship, but ultimately the characters persevered.

We never did continue with the rest of the series. I think it was some time before the other adventures came out and we continued on with the characters created for this adventure (with the exception of the paladin who died fighting a giant weasel on the way back to town). I think it is all the fun we had with this adventure that really makes me wish I had written it.